To think this is an inappropriate passage of the Bible for a school Christmas service?

[RevolutionofOurTime]

DD10 has been asked to do a reading at the school’s Xmas carol service.

The passage is Genesis 3: 8-15:

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" So he said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" Then the man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."

And the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." So the Lord God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." “

I’m not impressed. Surely they could have chosen other (NT) passages where the focus is not on original sin (and don’t blame a woman for it 🧐)?

I’m an atheist, but was raised a Catholic and I have no objection to DD taking part in the service. I have been to countless midnight masses (Xmas services where I’m from) and I’m sure the Genesis was never the focus.

IABU to think this is not appropriate for a Christmas service?

“ Wow I wouldnt want my children reading this. I would be confounded how to make any credible explanation of such tosh”
Would you? You mustn’t have had much practice at explaining stuff to children!

No, I'm saying it would be difficult to prove that the Bible was made up.

My point is that applying a modern idea of what 'fiction' is, doesn't really work here.

(Btw, think you have misread me - I said you'd struggle to find much sustained oral tradition in MND, not in the Bible! Shakespeare does a good job of faking up an oh-so-English set of fairies, but they're pretty literary in construction).

I still don t understand why the Bible could not have been “made up”

Because we all know that talking snakes, virgin births, resurrections, turning water into wine, and feeding 5000 with a bit a bread and a couple of fish, are clearly everyday occurrences. If they'd wanted to make stuff up, the bible would be full of stuff that's impossible.

(I have to say, this discussion always makes me wonder how on earth the Song of Songs got into the Bible. But that's perhaps by the bye.)

One of the arguments used to age Jesus when he started his ministry is that he quotes from Song of Songs - and apparently men had to be ver 30 to read it.

And I love Adam lay ybonden.

I thought 9 lessons from Kings was broadcast all over the world?

And really to study English Literature or Art History etc. you could do with a reasonable knowledge of the Bible and Greek myths.

Because we all know that talking snakes, virgin births, resurrections, turning water into wine, and feeding 5000 with a bit a bread and a couple of fish, are clearly everyday occurrences. If they'd wanted to make stuff up, the bible would be full of stuff that's impossible.

It’s like you don’t understand the difference between making something up and writing down something you believe to be true.

But it isn't that simple, is it, @Lifecraft?

If you look at virtually anything written in the past (even the quite recent past), you will find people earnestly claiming to have seen, heard, and understood things we would now politely claim to be utter nonsense.

You get historians of England whose histories include magicians, dragons, and giants. You get people who thought that unicorns existed. You get people who thought that flaming stars in the sky were signs of divine anger.

It is not easy just to say 'oh, they were making it up,' because what does that mean, except that we now know better and we feel superior? It may have been the best received wisdom of the day.

And that point is complicated by thinking about what different cultures have meant by 'true' or 'accurate'. We know, obviously, that there cannot have been a time when a flood rose up over the entire surface of the earth and killed everything except two of each kind of animal. But we also know flood myths are pretty common - it might be that there was an actual catastrophic flood; it might be people are thinking in more metaphorical terms about what 'disaster' means than we tend to.

YY, Molly, but that doesn't explain how the S of S got into the Bible?

Sarah: that’s a really excellent post.

It’s so easy to forget, isn’t it, that the “ridiculous” beliefs of the past weren’t “ridiculous” at all. That they were the sum of what people understood and believed. That to believe in an evil talking snake isn’t so ridiculous when your neighbour has just been hanged for talking to her evil talking toad, because the belief that spirits exist in the world is unquestioned and so the belief that they can inhabit animals follows on from that. That to believe in a virgin birth isn’t ridiculous when you believe the same force that placed the child inside her parted the Dead Sea. That to believe in someone feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes isn’t ridiculous when you believe the crop you just raised was destroyed by a curse placed on you by a disgruntled lover.

These beliefs were real because - to the people who held them - magic was real. And the gods were powerful magic.

Well written church and state. Past beliefs defined their reality. We know more now, but even in my lifetime what was science fiction has become fact, and many science facts have become ridiculous and disproven.

Thanks - and YY, I so agree with you.

And of course in 100 or 500 years people will look back at us and wonder how on earth we didn't realise so many things we believe are utter nonsense!

@SarahAndQuack There is a lot in the Christian bible which is no longer in the Jewish equivalent. And the Catholic Bible has the Apocrypha which isn't in the Protestant one (although can be used for readings in the C of E). I think the early church spent a lot of time choosing what to keep, and kept most of the old testament stuff.

And I don't think they were quite as "prudish" about sex as the Victorians - even when they went down the celibacy track.

I think the point has got muddled somewhat. The Bible isn't one book - it's a collection of texts written in different genres, styles and across time.

The majority of Christians generally seem to believe that Genesis is allegory (I've yet to meet someone who thinks there was a literal snake and apple tree). To read it as history would be like reading a love poem as a medical text book. Thats not to deny that there is still truth there e.g. The Fall of Man but it is written in a way that the point of the text is understandable and particularly understandable to the people of the time.

We wouldn't teach Quantum physics to a 4 year old. We would develop their understanding at the time and make their learning journey appropriate for their development.

It's important to note that many people would have originally recognised Genesis as allegory due to the writing style. We're not as smart and revolutionary than we like to think!

And of course in 100 or 500 years people will look back at us and wonder how on earth we didn't realise so many things we believe are utter nonsense!

They will. And some of the dafter souls will think people were just making it all up!

YABU. Like it or lump it.

No, molly, the Song of Songs is part of the Hebrew Bible as well as Anglican/Catholic traditions.

It's not so much the sex element I think is surprising (it's in no way graphic, and there are far more graphic bits elsewhere). It's just quite different from anything else. I suspect it's a love poem that got preserved, and simply got incorporated into the religious writings. But who knows?

There is (according to Google) a reading of the Song of Songs as a marital allegory, symbolising the relationship between God and Israel. Which sounds a bit unlikely to me. But it seems more likely that the many references to fertility and abundance in the song are representative of ‘the sacred’ in its broadest sense.

Oh, sure there is. It would be the interpretation Jesus would have known. It's later glossed as a prophetic allegory of Christ's love for the Church (cf. Leonard Cohen's 'Last Year's Man').

But I agree with you it seems unlikely it was written as allegory. It doesn't have that feel.

“ And of course in 100 or 500 years people will look back at us and wonder how on earth we didn't realise so many things we believe are utter nonsense!”

Well. Up to a point. Since the scientific method was established, they will be able to see why we believed things because they will be able to see the evidence we based the beliefs on. The things people believed in the face of the evidence will probably continue to be nonsense!

But we can also see why people in the past believed things, can't we?

Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I think you are confusing the fact you are not very familiar with the logic people have used in the past, with the idea that there was no logic.

@Lifecraft Because we all know that talking snakes, virgin births, resurrections, turning water into wine, and feeding 5000 with a bit a bread and a couple of fish, are clearly everyday occurrences. If they'd wanted to make stuff up, the bible would be full of stuff that's impossible.

@churchandstate It’s like you don’t understand the difference between making something up and writing down something you believe to be true

It's like you don't know the difference between thinking something is true, or writing something down you know isn't true but will help you control the masses thru a combination of guilt and fear.

Anyway, the bible is meant to be the word of god. Which makes me wonder why there is nothing in it that wasn't known to Middle eastern man 2000 years ago. No bacteria, no penguins, no geysers, no armadillos, no kangaroos, no glaciers. God would have know about all of these things, so why aren't they in the bible? The only animals that get a mention are stuff like oxen, rams, frogs, locust and other stuff that was knocking about around Judea and it's surrounding areas.

You'd think god would have chucked in a polar bear or something?

Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I think you are confusing the fact you are not very familiar with the logic people have used in the past, with the idea that there was no logic.

There's precious little today given so many people believe this guff.

It's like you don't know the difference between thinking something is true, or writing something down you know isn't true but will help you control the masses thru a combination of guilt and fear.

I do, but I don’t believe that’s why it was written down.

You come across as very ignorant of the Christian faith, if you don’t mind me saying so. The Bible being considered to be the word of God doesn’t mean it needs to have polar bears in it, or MRI scanners. It means - according to the precepts of Christianity - that God’s word was revealed through the media of people who were living in the Middle East. I see nothing silly about that.

“ Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I think you are confusing the fact you are not very familiar with the logic people have used in the past, with the idea that there was no logic.”

I think that the logic was exactly the same. Most people now are completely incapable, for example, of separating correlation and causation. I see no reason why it would have been any different in what my dd used to call “then times”.

Well. Up to a point. Since the scientific method was established, they will be able to see why we believed things because they will be able to see the evidence we based the beliefs on.

That’s a big assumption. What if they just think we invented the evidence?

Isn’t the bit about in pain and in suffering thou shalt bring forth children missing ?